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Passage illustrated

Think not of the past, Richard," said Isabella, tenderly.

"The past! Oh! how can I cease to ponder upon the past, when it has nearly bereaved me of all hope for the future?" exclaimed Markham, in an impassioned tone.

"Not all hope," murmured Isabella; "since hope still remains to me!"
"Angel that thou art!" cried Richard, pressing the maiden's hand fondly. "How weak I am, since it is from thee that moral courage ever is imparted."

Commentary

This effective illustrations epitomizes the artist’s strengths and weaknesses:
He usually has a gift for composition, and here the placement of Richard Markham and Isabel Alteroni under a bare tree with her exiled father’s mansion behind in the distance perfectly captures the present state of the lovers. Like the tree barren in winter, their hope of marriage is only possible in the future, and the
girl’s palatial home also symbolizes the ambiguous nature of their futures. Is the noble, unjustly convicted ex-convict Markham always going to be kept far distant from the Alteroni family, or (as it turns out) will he miraculously go to Italy, become a conquering hero, earn a princedom, and marry his beloved?

Other strengths and weaknesses typical of Stiff appear here as well: the tree and the mansion are well drawn, as are the garments worn by the couple, but, as usual, Stiff has problems with the faces and anatomy: Richard’s leg looks very odd, and the faces are too briefly etched, one result of which is that almost all his women look very much alike. Furthermore, although the novelist describes all the young women in The Mysteries of London as extraordinarily beautiful, his illustrator never manages to make them look so. — George P. Landow